“Dear Amazon,” Improve the Kindle ideas

I know you love delivering value to customers like me – and I know you’re into making money. I won’t begrudge you that. However, I believe you are missing several huge opportunities to make your customers extremely happy and make some money in the process. Here is one area that I believe you could improve upon:

I came upon this idea after reading the Gawker article, How the Kindle Ruins Your Dating Game. I realized, many people want, nay, need the things they read to convey a certain message to the world about themselves. This is why people buy these expensive skins for their devices. But skins are hard to change, and only convey one aspect of the individual’s personality. What about the screen saver? I figured, it should be simple to change my screen saver to show the cover of the books I am currently reading…

As it turns out, it was not simple at all. In fact, I just plain couldn’t do it! Amazon, what??

In my efforts to find out if there was a legal way to change my Kindle screen saver, I came across several sites that help people jailbreak their devices, voiding the warranty. This is bad for customers and this is bad for you. So why are you letting this madness continue?

You can give customers what they want while also benefiting. Have you noticed how many after market products (cases, skins, etc.) are selling for Kindles? Why not release a new feature for the Kindle that allows users to replace their screen savers with new collections that you sell and make available for digital download?

In addition, users could pay for an “unlock” that will cycle through the book covers of their books as the screen saver – or perhaps give users more control and allow them to use specially marked pages from their books as screen savers?

Finally, you could create a special page on Amazon.com where users can upload their own artwork to be used as screen saver screens – and other users can buy them allowing the original creators and you to profit. Shoot, you could even charge users to download their own artwork to use as a screen saver – after all, you’re in control.

This would create a quadruple win situation:

You get to make more money off the lucrative customization market.

You discourage people from hacking their devices, thus maintain control of your product.

Your customers get the customization they way for their device.

Your customers can maintain the integrity of their product software and warranty.

This is just one tiny idea I have about ways you can deliver more value to your customers through just the existing current generation Kindle devices. I would love the opportunity to discuss with your some more ideas about how you can deliver value, and create opportunities for your company with digital devices such as the Kindle. Then again, I’m sure you have all the best minds working on these problems right now, don’t you? Well, if you want one more, give me a call.

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Just one of millions of blogs that billions of people will ignore every day. I have no illusions that anyone actually cares to read this drivel. I mainly just post here for posterity and catharsis. If you feel like taking a peek through this window into my world please don't stand too close. You'll fog up the glass.